GP Abuse

The last four days of my life have been spent at the Auckland Food Show, and event where over 30,000 people are treated to "a stellar array of the very best in food and wine." For $22 you can spend 8 hours wandering around three gigantic halls of delictable delights, sampling smoked paprika flakes, wagyu beef and Paul Holmes Extra Virgin Olive Oil. You could even sample Paul Holmes himself as he was there, apparently he tasted rich and meaty with a good nose.

For $22 you could also spend 8 hours wandering around three gigantic halls getting absolutely rat-arsed. After four days of meticulous observation and statistical analysis I have prepared the following bar graph.There's something about us Kiwis and free alcohol that makes us act like the Kurgan out of the fantastic film Highlander. We start driving on the wrong side of the road, try and chop other people's heads off and lick priests. I remember being in the New Zealand theatresports team in Los Angeles in 1994 and we all went to a party in Malibu where there was lots of free beer. It was lots of horrible American beer like Budweiser and Miller Lite however that didn't stop us and we began to drink the stuff as if it was little bottles of Bella Swann's blood and we were all Robert Pattinson. I was at a loss as to why none of the other teams were following our lead, the Danes came and pawed at a bottle, licked the rim a bit and wandered off to sniff each others bottoms, the Germans dipped their sausages in and marched off to invade the dance floor and the South Africans just sang their new national anthem over and over again. Even the Aussies were restrained. We got rip-roaringly drunk and my team-mate Simon fell of a fence during the 45th singing of the new South African national anthem much to our amusement and nobody elses. We couldn't help ourselves, it was free.

At the food show you could go and get lots of free wine samples and by midday people were staggering around being low rent and obnoxious. I was dressed as a Belgian beer maker in full Shakespearian attire with a large grey moustache and the drunk people just loved me. On the Thursday I was Napoleon Bonoparte with very large pantaloons that I had to hold up for fear of exposing my little general to the general public. I won't go into details as to why I was dressed like this, it was incredibly creatively fulfilling and I produced some of my best work and I can now pour a very good pint. The point I want to make is that the general public are arseholes.

They really are. I'm sure there is some equation to prove the number of dickheads increases exponentially in relation to group size, alcohol consumed and ridiculousness of the costume you're wearing. Perhaps something like this:

Jared and I were giving away free beer and even then a lot of them were rude and belligerent. They had paid their $22 and that meant they were going to get drunk, their children were going to get drunk, they would eat enough to last them for a week and their children could kick Napoleon in the balls. Jared who was slowly dying alongside me, actually heard some delightful father say to their whining spawn, "No, we're not leaving, you haven't eaten enough yet." Last year I used the ancient put-down line, 'If I wanted to hear from an arsehole I'd fart' to some large man who wouldn't shut up and then he promptly proceeded to pull down his pants and show me his arse-hole before falling over and spilling his free glass of beer over his own anus. The image is forever burned on my retinas, like I'd stared at a big brown sun. This happened at 2pm on a Sunday.

I'm not sure why this happens. Sure the booze plays a part, however even without it, the general public are stupid, rude, dumb, thick, annoying, punchable and a bunch of muhs. It should be compulsory for everyone to work at least six months in a service industry, either in a cafe, bar, in retail, dressed as Napoleon and then maybe they would understand how horrible they as members of the general public have been and change their ways. Yes, I admit it goes both ways, there have been many situations where I have smiled and been very plesant while ordering a coffee only to be graced with a look reserved for someone who has farted in a broken lift. Bad service is intolerable however if you, as a member of the GP have given bad customerice you should expect bad service in return. You hear stories about waiting staff spitting, or whacking off into the food of rude diners however if they were allowed to do it in front of the diners at the table it would be much more effective. If I'd been allowed to do that while dressed as Napoleon I would have felt much better. I would probably be in hospital, but would feel much better.